Posts Tagged ‘omnipotence’

At prayer group (‘pentagon’ – there are 5 of us) last night, I was very full of spaghetti, in both the literal and metaphorical sense of the word. I had a belly full of spaghetti, courtesy of one of the other girls, and a head full of spaghetti after we attempted to read the ‘What is God like?’ chapter in our book (Christian beliefs – 20 basics every Christian should know, by Wayne Grudem). We only got half way through the chapter, since we are very good at going off on huge tangents. Our discussion and what we read really blew my mind. As a fairly new Christian, I am learning something new every day. But last night was information OVERLOAD. God is truly awesome.

I thought I’d recap on some of the stuff we talked about.

God’s existence

The bible simply assumes God’s existence. Every created thing gives evidence of God and his character – human beings, created in the image of God, give the most evidence of God’s existence and character.

So belief in God is not some ‘blind faith’, it is based on evidence found both in the bible and in the natural world. Whenever I’d though of ‘creation’ as being evidence for God, I always though of the physical world, mountains, rivers etc. But then we read that we, as created human beings, are clear indicators for a creator God. It seems so obvious now, but that’s pretty cool.

This reminds me of laminin, my favourite cell adhesion protein. I’ll tell you about it at some other time.

God’s knowability

Not only does God exist, he exists in such a way that we can know things about him and actually come to know him personally. We can never know God fully – he is infinite and we are finite. His greatness is too great to ever fully to be known.

We have an infinitely great God, who we can’t possibly understand, but we can know him personally. Wow.

God is independent

God doesn’t need us or anything else in creation for anything. God has always been perfectly and completely happy and fulfilled in his personal existence. God always was. He was not created; he never came into being. Therefore God is not dependent on anyone for anything. His entire creation is entirely dependent on him. God chooses to give us value and sinificance. We are important to him!

Though God does not need us, he allows us to bring joy to his heart. I bring joy to the creator God?!

God is eternal

He has no beginning or end or succession of events in his own being. He has always existed. His view of time is radically different to ours. God views all of past history as vividly as he would if it were a brief event that had just happened. But he also views a brief event as if it were going on forever. As the one who created and rules over time, God uses time for his own purposes.

It’s very had to get my head round the fact that God created time. Having no time makes no sense to me. But it wouldn’t, that’s why God’s God and I’m me. Because I can’t understand it. It makes my head hurt trying to understand it.

God is omnipresent

He is unlimited with regard to space. He does not have size or spatial dimensions; he is present in every point of space with his whole being. He cannot be limited by material space because he created it.

Again, not only did God create time, he also created space. So he is not limited by space. Baffling.

God is omniscient

He fully knows all things that he could have done, but did not do, and all things that he might have created, but did not create. He also knows all possible events that will not actually happen, and events that would have resulted if some other events had turned differently in history. God is always, at all times, fully aware of everything. His knowledge never changes or grows. Nothing surprises him, nothing is hidden from him. From all eternity God has known all things that would happen and all things that he would do.

This little bit turned into a huge discussion about predestination. There is a whole chapter on that later in the book, so hopefully I will come to learn more about it then. At the moment it’s all very confusing. But as I learned last week, everything that I need to be a Christian is very clear. If there are things that aren’t very clear, then they aren’t that important.

Writing this has made me remember how I felt last night. Confused and bewildered, but absolutely in awe. God is truly awesome.